Confessions

I have been driving my car when unnecessary. After all my big talk about reducing my driving, I am guilty of driving to my night class and to any meetings that are after 6pm (free parking!). My only excuse is the cold and the dark. Once it is dark outside, I have found I don't like biking back to my apartment. (Neither does my mother, honestly.) It is also getting colder and I also don't like the cold. So there you have it, I am a wimpy and lazy environmentalist.

How should I fix this problem? Maybe I should make up for it by carpooling everywhere possible and employing driving techniques to improve my gas mileage.

Something interesting I learned about my balance in the ecosystem today is I am still pretty comparable to the average American. I used the Nature Conservancy CO2 emissions calculator and my estimated emissions are 11 tons of CO2 per year. The U.S. average is 27 and the world average is 5.5. While that is much better than the U.S. average, the details are what is interesting to me. Home energy accounts for 40.7% of my emissions (36.2% U.S.), food and diet is 31.5% (15.1% U.S.), driving and flying is 21.3% (44.3% U.S.) and recycling and waste is 6.5% (4.4% U.S.). I didn't realize how much of my food and diet were contributing to my impact. I'm not sure how to start buying local foods, however. For one thing, they are more expensive and all price decisions have to be agreed upon by my roommates. But I will have to do some research about local suppliers and see if they will supply throughout the winter.


As a sidenote, I am the 753,420,193 richest person in the world. I was expecting a ridiculously large number like that, but I was surprised because that puts me in the top 12.55% of people! Really puts things in perspective, huh? It was pointed out to me, though, that the issue with this site is that "richness" is relative. It is the purchasing power that is important, how much you can get for what you have. But it still makes me think twice about calling myself poor!